[hibernate-dev] [Bean Validation] Same instance validated only once and determinism

I would like to revive the subject of reaching the same instance multiple times in an object graph. Assuming the following example A |-> C -> B |-> D -> B Each arrow is an association marked as @Valid Today, the second time an instance is reached, it is ignored. So assuming B is invalid we can have c.b is invalid OR d.b is invalid. I am getting more and more uncomfortable with that non-determinism. Dhanji was not bothered arguing that in this case, a user can define the order using groups. It's actually not possible as the same constraint on B share the same groups definition. An alternative proposal would look like that. For a given object graph branch, the same instance cannot be validated several times. This would lead to the validation of the same object several times provided it is in different branches in the previous example, we would have two constraint violation reports: - c.b is invalid - d.b is invalid Can you tell me on which side you are?